Category Archives: Web Article Review

the U.S. playbook for unsafe streets

Seriously, solutions exist on how to design and build safe streets. NACTO has published a set of line-by-line modifications to the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

One thing I’ve learned halfway through an engineering career (but I’m not claiming to be a practicing transportation engineer or expert) is that change doesn’t occur at the site or street scale until best practices from elsewhere filter down to what I call the local “playbook” for design. The playbook is the set of codes, ordinances, regulations, design standards, performance criteria, standard plans and drawings, manuals, guidelines, etc. that a local community uses for design. The status quo in these documents usually has some reason for existing, but it also has enormous inertia, to the point where it can take decades for a clear solution to a problem to make its way into actual on-the-ground designs, and today’s designs can represent solutions that were appropriate for conditions as they existed decades ago.

Local professionals and bureaucrats are not always ignorant, but they are harried and operating under pressure that leaves little time for learning. There is a certain cynicism that sets in, at least in the engineering industry, and in my opinion the “STEM” approach to education tends to nudge more literal minded thinkers (who tend to be good at math and logic) into the industry while discouraging more creative thinkers. Revised curricula and continuing education for planners, engineers, architects, the construction industry, and public officials can be part of the answer. Grass roots advocacy can also be part of the answer. But changes to official documents at the federal level can really help get the ball rolling, because states often follow suit (slowly), and then local projects are often required to follow these documents to be eligible for state and federal funding. Just one small example is that in Pennsylvania, there is (or was until recently, I’m not sure of the status) a law that cars had to be parked within a certain number of inches of a curb. Sounds reasonable enough, until you realize that it actually makes modern protected bike lanes illegal! There are lots of little things like that, and then there are big things like safe intersections with different signals for motor vehicles, bikes, and pedestrians.

masks, ventilation, and filtration work in schools; social distancing and plexiglass don’t do anything

There, I think my headline summarized by layman’s understanding of this study published by CDC. I’m hoping my (rising) third grader won’t have to wear a mask to school in the fall, but that wouldn’t be the end of the world. What I’m really hoping for is five full-time in-person school days, which kids really need for normal educational and social development at this point. Masks would be a small price to pay for that until younger children can be vaccinated, but really can we speed that up.

I’ll give the School District of Philadelphia some praise for comprehensive testing of its HVAC systems district wide, followed by correction of problems. What they found though was that many classrooms had no functioning ventilation at all! I suspect they were like that for many decades. How many flu epidemics ravaged the city in that time because this city has a culture of accepting amateurism, mediocrity, and incompetence? I want to see the pandemic money spent to bring school buildings up to date, starting with HVAC and air conditioning. Air conditioning isn’t a luxury these days. It’s getting hotter and this would mean the buildings could be used year-round which could have enormous benefits.

more UFOs from Harry Reid

Harry Reid learned how to swim in a brothel. That’s a fun fact is this NYT op-ed about UFOs. He talks about how he tried to destigmatize reportings of sightings by servicemen during his time in the Senate. He also talks about a new government report scheduled to come out in June although it “may be delayed”.

As for what they are:

What have I personally learned from official investigations into unidentified aerial phenomena so far? The truth, disappointing as it may be, is that there’s still a great deal we don’t understand. It’s unclear whether the U.F.O.s we have encountered could have been built by foreign adversaries, whether our pilots’ visual perception during some encounters was somehow distorted, or whether we truly have credible evidence of extraterrestrial visitations. There may be other, as yet unknown explanations for some of these strange sightings.

New York Times

In plain English, I would say there is an increasing consensus that UFO sightings are real, but there is also a significant likelihood of a terrestrial explanation. Better put Robert Mueller on it to make sure we get a clear and unambiguous report we can all agree on.

housing policy overview

A blogger on Planetizen has a good overview of what many professional planners and economists believe would make a real dent in the U.S. housing problem.

We support reforms to allow developers to build more affordable housing types (e.g., multiplexes, townhouses, and mid-rise multifamily) with unbundled parking (parking rented separately from housing, so car-free households are no longer forced to pay for costly parking spaces they don’t need) in walkable urban neighborhoods, including large-scale upzoning, eliminating parking minimums, reducing development fees and approval requirements for moderate-priced infill, plus subsidizing housing for families with special needs.

Most planners also support innovative home ownership models, such as housing cooperatives and co-housing, modest inclusivity requirements (not so high that they reduce housing production), subsidies for households with special needs such as disabilities and very low incomes, and, sometimes, special regulations such as rent controls to limit rent increases.

Planetizen

This sounds about right to me. There are a couple reasons it is hard to do in today’s U.S. The most obvious is the massive political corruption driven by the construction/road/auto/oil-industrial complex. It is hard for politicians, especially local ones, to resist these forces. The second is the consumer preference for auto-dependent suburban development. I would not take this choice away from anyone. I would just stop subsidizing it and make it no longer the only viable choice for most Americans. Many people would like to try out a walkable urban neighborhood, but assume that there is not one available that they could afford. And they would largely be right. There are just not enough of them, and even in the ones we have the public infrastructure (protected bike lanes, frequent/clean/reliable public transportation, parks and trees) lags far behind what the leading cities in Europe and even parts of South America are providing. (Asia is hopeless though.)

The final issue is that you just can’t combine widespread car ownership and use with a walkable urban neighborhood. You have to get the number of cars down, then use all that space you saved for more housing, open space, and other amenities. And obviously, you have to make sure people can still get around.

So the answer is pretty clear – remove density limits (upzone in the parlance) and parking requirements (actually these last two sound a lot like a “free market” to me), then offset some of the disadvantages of urban density with excellent public infrastructure and parks. You may still need some subsidies and non-profit options to help the poor, but ideally that needs to be done at least at the metropolitan area scale if not state/federal scale. It’s a fairly simple formula but a long game and a politically difficult one.

misleading the public about misleading the public

Rolling Stone (I admit, maybe not the #1 most prestigious, objective journalistic outlet) goes through the history of companies using propaganda to blame consumers that environmental problems are their fault, from smoking to litter to plastic waste (these last two being related) and now global warming.

Selling deadly poisonous products to children for decades gains you admission to one circle of hell. But decades of deliberate propaganda aimed at intentionally destroying nature and civilization to make a short-term profit? It’s the biggest crime in history.

what’s new with Starlink?

According to Verge, Starlink is an incredible engineering achievement, and it is…just not that great. It’s a slow, intermittent, inconsistent internet service nowhere near as good as cable, which is nowhere near as good or cheap as what other developed countries have had for some time now. They say it may improve as Starlink launches more satellites, but that is upsetting scientists, and the U.S. could do much better with policies that bring real competition to the telecom market.

actual footage inside Elon Musk’s subterranean lair – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – ELON MUSK IS A BOND VILLAIN!

jobs, jobs, jobs, families, infrastructure, and more jobs…and Richard Nixon, from the bottom of my heart go fuck yourself!

Adam Tooze has a nice visualization of Biden’s spending proposals. Is this a tree plot? a cartogram? I’m not sure, experts please weigh in. A few things I noticed:

  • What Biden talks most and least about does not always match the largest and smallest proposed spending amounts. I think this is called “messaging”. For example, more would be spent on electric vehicle subsidies than on community college.
  • There is no clear line between the infrastructure package and the families package. For example, there is spending on public schools in the former and child care facilities in the latter.

That’s just scratching the surface. You could (and should) stare at this graphic for hours, and then there is a long article to go with it. But I have to go make breakfast now because I can hear the children getting grumpy, which means my precious little bit of early morning quiet thinking time as a working-parent-of-small-children-with-no-childcare-or-grandparent-support is now over. If Biden gets this stuff through our dysfunctional Congress, it will be mostly too late to help my family but I hope it helps others. Thanks Obama…Bush, Clinton, other Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, and Nixon at least. Especially Nixon, fuck you – a quick skim of the article reminded me of the bipartisan childcare program of the 1970s that you vetoed. Oh and also, fuck you Ralph Nader because maybe Al Gore would have gotten some of this stuff back on track 20 years ago. And last but not least, thank you once again Bernie Sanders for not pulling a Nader.

Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg pioneered teaching children to think morally through the use of moral dilemmas.

Kohlberg’s theory holds that moral reasoning, which is the basis for ethical behavior, has six identifiable developmental constructive stages – each more adequate at responding to moral dilemmas than the last. Kohlberg suggested that the higher stages of moral development provide the person with greater capacities/abilities in terms of decision making and so these stages allow people to handle more complex dilemmas. In studying these, Kohlberg followed the development of moral judgment beyond the ages originally studied earlier by Piaget, who also claimed that logic and morality develop through constructive stages. Expanding considerably upon this groundwork, it was determined that the process of moral development was principally concerned with justice and that its development continued throughout the life span, even spawning dialogue of philosophical implications of such research. His model “is based on the assumption of co-operative social organization on the basis of justice and fairness.”

Kohlberg studied moral reasoning by presenting subjects with moral dilemmas. He would then categorize and classify the reasoning used in the responses, into one of six distinct stages, grouped into three levels: pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional. Each level contains two stages.

Wikipedia

I find this interesting because I think we teach children about basic morality like the golden rule, but a lot of people never progress to more abstract moral thought as they grow into adults. I am convinced if we all thought about the extent to which each and every one of our daily choices is right or wrong, the world would be a better place. We would still make some bad or selfish choices of course, but we would make more unselfish choices on balance. Instead, we go to work for companies and tend to uncritically adopt their profit-maximizing missions in place of our own values. If we thought more morally on a daily basis, we would still be under the same pressure to provide food and shelter for our families, and that would still drive a lot of our choices, but we would be weighing other considerations at the same time – for example, the suffering of other people and maybe animals, the destruction of millennia-old natural habitats, and consequences both near-term and well into the future – and that might subtly shift our small daily choices. Subtly shift a lot of small daily choices, and I believe it could add up to a large global shift for our civilization and species.

The criticism I hear of these ideas is that people make moral decisions based more on emotion than reason. But is it a valid criticism to say that if we don’t actively develop our capacity to apply rational thinking to moral choices, then our choices will be based mostly on emotion? That’s sounds more like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me.

Kissinger on the Terminator scenario

Henry Kissinger, whether you think he is a particularly moral person or not, is known to possess a pretty sharp mind. He’s 97 though, so one could question if it is still as sharp as it was. Anyway, he is worried about the combination of advanced nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence.

“For the first time in human history, humanity has the capacity to extinguish itself in a finite period of time,” Kissinger said.

“We have developed the technology of a power that is beyond what anybody imagined even 70 years ago.”

“And now, to the nuclear issue is added the high tech issue, which in the field of artificial intelligence, in its essence is based on the fact that man becomes a partner of machines and that machines can develop their own judgement,” he said.

France 24

What. you don’t read France 24? This is the beauty of RSS feeds, you just get random stuff coming in from many directions, probably still biased to your personal predilections, but at least the odd random view that you have to give some thought. I also have a few sketchy sources (talking to you Breitbart) intentionally coming in that make me uncomfortable.